A cold silence swept through the medic wing.
Not the kind that belonged to sickness or grief. This silence was surgical. Clinical. Heavy with the knowledge that something catastrophic lurked beneath the skin of the man lying unconscious on the table.
Sophie stared at the scanner in her hands without blinking. The faint geometric pattern pulsed softly against the holographic display. Each pulse looked like a heartbeat in reverse. Wrong. Inhuman. Predatory.
Beau stepped closer. “What is that?”
Sophie inhaled slowly. “It is a neural command sequence.”
I froze. My lungs forgot how to work. “The Program’s codes? Their command systems?”
“Older,” Sophie whispered. “Much older. Early prototypes. The ones they stopped using because they caused catastrophic aura collapse.”
Beau growled low. “
